I AM in shape. ROUND is a shape.

Over at the F-Word today a very good point has been addressed in the process of touching on the subject of why it is that  an eating disorders awareness and education site rails against issues of weight-based discrimination and promotes fat rights.  The point on which I wanted to elaborate is best summed up by this snippet from the above linked post (emphasis is mine):

Just as a starving anorectic brain will not function properly, neither will a brain that is not receiving the nutrients it needs, regardless of the amount of calories consumed. The problem for most naysayers is the understanding that a healthy diet and regular fitness regime will not always make — or keep — one thin. Everyday, researchers are discovering more about the influence of genetics on body size and shape and finding that while environmental factors may pull the trigger, genetics loads the gun. And part of having a healthy diet is also having a healthy relationship with food. In a healthy diet, there are no “good” and “bad” foods and no food is considered off-limits or taboo. One does not eat according to some prescribed diet plan or by counting points, but rather by listening to one’s own bodily cues on hunger and satiety and its needs and wants.

Poor nutrition and sedentary lifestyles do pose a significant health issue across the nation, but its one that affects all Americans and not just fat Americans.

I would venture to even change “Americans” to simply “people”.  The 3 basic necessities of life (Food, Water, and Shelter) are not only necessities for those folks in one particular country.  Everyone needs good nutrition for a well-working mind and movement of some kind to have a body that is fit to do those everyday tasks required of it.  The trouble today is in the public opinion that in order to BE nutritionally balanced and well fit; you need to be thin.  After all, if you’re fat you must NOT be eating well or working out, right?  It’s just COMMON SENSE!  The trouble with Common Sense though, is how very non-sensical it is.   

[C]ommon sense typically has more to do with assumptions and beliefs than with impartial observations made with the senses, and indeed these assumptions and beliefs are often contradicted by evidence.

How very true.  For example, the common assumption that a thin person is, automatically, healthier and more fit than a heavier person, is contradicted by the vast amount of scientific research to the contrary.  A person’s body shape and size and ability has, in fact, very little to do with their overall health.  Just as you shouldn’t expect to know the timbre of a person’s voice before they speak or the sincerity of their actions before they act; you can’t really TELL a person’s eating or exercise habits simply by looking at them.  With so much of the make-up of our bodies determined by our genetic codes, and not dependant upon our environments and ability to control aspects of our lives, one should be able to see “common-sensically” that weight and shape bear no accurate reflection on a person’s health.  Just like height or hair color or the shape of your nose, the length of your fingers; the size and shape of your entire body is largely dependant upon genetics.  Further, dramatically changing your weight, in the mistaken belief that starvation diets and over-exercize are making you healthier, will only serve to frustrate you as genetics constantly bounces back you back to where your body feels that it belongs.

The implications were clear. There is a reason that fat people cannot stay thin after they diet and that thin people cannot stay fat when they force themselves to gain weight. The body’s metabolism speeds up or slows down to keep weight within a narrow range. Gain weight and the metabolism can as much as double; lose weight and it can slow to half its original speed.

As reported in an article which took to reporting the findings of studies regarding obesity that didn’t make it into the public eye:

 One of the country’s foremost obesity researchers, Jeffrey M. Friedman, M.D., head of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at Rockefeller University explains that the commonly-held simplistic belief that obesity is just a matter of eating too much and/or not exercising enough is “at odds with substantial scientific evidence illuminating a precise and powerful biologic system.” According to his research and that of numerous others, obesity is the result of differences in biology and metabolism, not behavior, diet or the environment. Through their own volition, people can control their weight long-term to a very small degree.

“The propensity to obesity is, to a significant extent, genetically determined,” he says. Someone genetically predisposed to obesity “will become obese independent of their caloric intake” even when it’s restricted to that of thin counterparts. “The heritability of obesity is equivalent to that of height and greater than that of almost every other condition that has been studied,” Friedman states.

So, if your ability to control the physical appearance of your own bodily shell is so small; why is the belief that you CAN (and worse, that you SHOULD) so prevalent?  Well, part of it could be that the common-sense dogma about thinness meaning healthy behaviors has been so firmly ingrained that alternatives to these ideas are often not studied.  And, when research DOES turn up findings that run contrary to popular belief, those studies are not brought as forcibly to light as others that try to incite panic over what amounts to a barely tenable correlation.

The most disturbing part of having a society that, in large part, refuses to THINK before blindly accepting the public “common-sense” view on health is the damage it is doing to ALL of us.  We ALL need to get the right nutrition for our bodies.  We ALL need to maintain a fitness level that is workable for our bodies.  Yet, in the self-righteous shuffle of all the un-healthy blame onto “FAT!” we lose sight of the larger, more important, over-arching goal for which we SHOULD all be striving: health.  We also do a dis-service to those who AREN’T fat by assuming they are healthier. 

It is a privilege, and a very large one at that, to be healthy.  There are those who never live a day without pain.  Others who would love to know what it feels like to take an un-strained breath.  We should NOT be tacking one more criteria onto the list of what is needed to be considered of good health, invalidating the conscious efforts, and actual good health, of so many by denying the “healthy” status to those over a particular weight. It is also a detriment to those who are praised for the shape of their thinner bodies, regardless of eating/exercise habits to never hear about the nutrition and movement that their bodies, smaller though they might be, still require. 

Healthy is not synonymous with Thin.  Nor is Fat synonymous with Unhealthy.  Once we wrap our minds around THAT common sense; the ability to live happier (and healthier) lives becomes much simpler.

This post is a rambling reflection on what has been, thus far, my travels down the road to body-love and self acceptance.  It is a learning process; a long and often times confusing path filled with many questions and always the hope that one day, at that glowing end of the hard-work tunnel, I will find stability.

It has been many months, perhaps even a year now, since I first began to read FA blogs and work on my own understanding of HAES/Intuitive Eating.  As with any thing you choose to take on in your life, it is the small little goals that you have to appreciate reaching.  Those small steps are what will get you where you need to be. I think, in the last week, I have realize one of these small goals; taken a step or two.  I have finally gotten to the point when I am able to listen to my body’s hunger cues.  I know when I’m hungry.  I know when I’m thirsty.  I KNOW that I’m finally eating enough to sustain my body well because for one of the few times in my life (the others also marked by the periods in which I was not dieting); I have stopped biting my nails! It may not sound like a monumental thing to anyone else; but for me it is a huge accomplishment. 

After finally deciding to stop all the harmful yo-yo dieting and work on accepting myself for who and what shape and what size I happen to be I went through a rough time trying to find my footing.  Going from absolute control over every morsel to enter your mouth; counting each crumb and every calorie; to a free method of trying to listen to my own body’s signals was very difficult.  How would my body know what it wanted??  Worse, how was I supposed to know how to LISTEN to it!?  What if all I THOUGHT I wanted was cookies and instead I really needed celery?  Would I become the stereotyped fat person out of control, eating everything in sight?!??  Did I want to lose that much control?  What if I NEVER stopped gaining weight?!?!?

Yet, turning towards Shapely Prose, the blog which first introduced me to the idea that maybe, just MAYBE, hating my body (and thus myself) every second of every day, for not holding up to some incredible ideal to which I was trying to stretch, was not a healthy approach to life.  I began to ready about Health at Every Size.  I read about Intuitive Eating.  I wondered, how do I start down this path?  Will it be easy?  Will I never again wish I was someone thinner? Will I fail as I seemed to at every other “Lifestyle Change” I tried???  However, SP once again saved my sanity from the destructive meanderings of such thoughts with something that continues to shape my own learning process in finding out what Health at Every Size really means.

 It’s about looking out for yourself and your health, physical and mental, without judgment or obligation. That could mean veggies and walking, or it could mean cake and five minutes to yourself for once, or it could even mean another day of deliberate food restriction but with one micron less self-hatred. It’s a spectrum and a process. But one thing HAES always means is taking care of your body as much as time, finances, and energy will permit.

I am learning to take care of myself.  Learning to love the body I have; in the size and shape it happens to settle at.  I am working to unlearn the negative associations that tiny numbers on clothing have; reduce the sway that moving from one number to another; in either direction; have on my daily mood.  And it is difficult.  A lifetime of self-hate; of body-disgust; of just pure unadulterated displeasure at your own body’s place in the word; takes a lot to overcome.  But, it is a learning process. 

So, no matter what your current stage along your own path towards body confidence, whether you’ve just barely said NO to the idea of constant dieting, or whether you’ve finally heard your body’s hunger cues, or whether you’re already loving your body as much as you can, taking those bad days in stride with the rest, we can all benefit from remembering that it is always a learning process.  But learning never stops!  So drop that diet.  Go out and get that new haircut. Get that adorable dress.  Treat yourself with love.  You deserve it; now and always.

Learn something new. Try something different. Convince yourself that you have no limits.–Brian Tracey (The Treasury of Quotes)

One other thought, which has been tumbling around in my mind as I went to create this blog (aside from that of exercise for fun, not weight loss) was the concept of the society imposed morality….of food.  “Good” foods (Which have been known to change, by the way; anyone else remember Eggs Are Bad…but now they are Good?) are pushed on us all the time, while “bad” foods are disdained, disparaged, vilified and, on the occasion of their actual consumption, sinfully and guiltily enjoyed. Why is this? 

Do plants grow with the conscious realization of the inherent social acceptability?  Does a potato cry itself to sleep on its bed of dirt, knowing it is a white food of Starch! and Carbs! and waist-line danger?  Do carrots dream of the days when their tiny brethren were considered a “healthy” snack, instead of a tricky treat destined to bulge your belly?

Do beef-cows, raised to the slaughter, somehow know that their meat, if ground up, might be deemed “unhealthy” and sadly munch grass in remorse?  Do chickens somehow rejoice and cluck happily, knowing that their breast meat might be the “healthy” hinge upon which some future eater’s entire meal will depend?

The likely answer to these questions (which, unless someone out there is fluent in plant-speak or cow-chat, I would have a tough time getting a truly definite answer for) is: NO!  Plants don’t grow up to be Bad or Good.  Animals do not mill around with “healthy” or “unhealthy” branded by dna into their fur or feathers. What has created these labels, is us.  Everyday we are pumped full of more “science” to back up the claims of what IS good for you…or what ISN’T good for you (and the brain-washing is being forced upon us at younger and younger ages).

There ARE no intrinsically GOOD or BAD foods.  There is no one food which, when popped into your mouth and enjoyed, will automatically tip you into the SINFUL side of the life-balancing scale.  Nor is there any food which, if eaten if a large enough quantity, will balance out previous SIN foods or even tip you into the VIRTUE side of things.  Nothing in this world was CREATED with these labels attached.  We, in our society, have created the labels and internalized them so much that we now feel guilty for eating “bad” foods and virtuous for any meal with “good” foods. In the words of a fantastic piece by Marina Wolf:

On the face of it, our code of food morality seems very simple, breaking down into constituent parts–carbohydrates, sugar, salt, cholesterol, fats of various kinds–and supposedly essential truths about them. But nutrition science surges ever onward, constantly releasing new and contradictory studies. Butter was the bad guy up until a couple of months ago, when a new study suggested that the polyunsaturated fats in margarine may heighten the risk for developing breast cancer. Sugar is blamed for murder and premenstrual mayhem; dairy prolongs colds; flour stuffs you up; and cholesterol gets it both ways with its “good” and “bad” varieties.

God forbid you should happen across a food substance that contains more than one of these component evils. Look at what people love to feel bad about: chocolate truffles, ice cream, potato chips, French fries. Several centuries after its inception, Puritanism is still cookin’: if it tastes good, it’s got to be bad.

I say, stop feeling guilty for that bowl of ice cream.  Stop feeling like the Virgin Mary for ordering the salad instead of the fish and chips you really wanted. Denying and allowing yourself certain items, based solely on what the media is currently telling you (which changes all the time as new science replaces the old, sometimes with a complete contradiction), is crazy making!  The only way in which a food should be deemed good or bad should be in how your body reacts to it*.  If you learn to LISTEN to the cues your body provides (our bodies really are amazing creations you know, they TELL us when to eat and what they need), then you will not NEED some artificially created set of guidelines to dictate your menus. 

Eat a variety (no one likes a boring menu day after week after year).  Eat what you WANT, as much as you need, and listen to your wonderful body.  If you find that you crave chips or cake or any other “sinful” food; then eat it!  Don’t feel guilty and eat until your body says STOP!  If you go too far, you’ll know and won’t do it again because you’ll end up with a body that lets you know, with some pain, what you did wrong. Exactly the same for “good” foods.  If you crave that salad because your body is going “Hey!  Some leafy greens!  I don’t care what else is there on the plate but MAN I need me some leafy greens”.  Then eat it.  But don’t feel like you’ve overcome some great willpower struggle against good and evil when you do so.  Food is meant to be eaten to nourish, to sustain, to enjoy! 

Don’t get me wrong, eating more intuitively is difficult.  All our lives we’ve been trained to eat what the latest “science” has deemed healthy and valid for consumption.  You must “Unlearn what you have learned!” (Thanks Yoda).  Yet, if little kids can learn by experience (hmmm if I touch the thorns on this plant, it hurts.  Don’t do it again.  Check!) why do we, as teens or adults, think we somehow lack the same intuitive ability to trust our environment and our bodies?  Treat “good” and “bad” as relative terms.  Use them in relation to how your OWN body responds to any particular food.  Does Ham make you feel gross?  Don’t eat it!  Do carrots make you gag?  Don’t eat them!  Does Chicken make you happy?  Eat it!  How about that cookie?  Does eating it make your body feel better?  Then eat it!!! The road to eating “well” is full of many bumps and turns as we learn to feel our way.  It is a path that is different for EVERYONE.  So grab a fork.  Buckle up.  Throw those rigid food rules out the window; make your own! And learn to take your own eating path; free from sin or virtue but full of flavor and feeling fantastic; I hereby grant you permission!

*Although if you avoid any particular foods due to manufacturing processes, additives or the farming means used to create them for your own beliefs then yes you could use morality to define foods as “good” or “bad” outside of their relationship to your body’s responses. 

Well I’m still crafting a clever bit of discourse on the morality of food that I hope to have out later.  However, I saw this “article” (Oh Yahoo News…how you always manage to disappoint) of tips on how to save over $1,000 on gas per year and had to share one of the AMAZING tips for saving gas. Here is the offending piece of insanity.  While I can’t speak to most of the tips and their ability to save you money (Mythbusters can do some of that, and Popular Mechanics and MSN and Edmunds.com can speak to some of them as well), I CAN address my “favorite” tip:

8. Lose Weight:

Possible Savings 13.1 gallons/yr for each 100 pounds you remove ($104/yr)

Government estimates say that an extra 100 pounds in your car can reduce fuel efficiency by up to two percent.  And that’s an average — the smaller the car, the more extra weight makes the engine work harder.

Did you see?  If you lose just 100 pounds, you will save *drum roll* 13 gallons of gas.  A year.  For losing 100!!! pounds.  I don’t know about you, but unless you’ve been so lucky as to never had to diet in your life (in which case I wish I had grown up in YOUR world); you just had a bit of a cringe reaction to the idea of TRYING to lose 100 pounds.  I mean, seriously, 100 pounds!

Any check-out counter at any local supermarket will show magazines that bombard you with “Lose those 15 pounds in only 6 weeks!” or “How to burn 10 pounds of fat in 4 weeks eating only grapefruit!”.  As well as other mind-boggling diet-tips intended to squash any enjoyment you may have of food or exercise.  And those are only for small weight loss!  If you follow the general guidelines any weight-loss centric nutritionist will spout at you, the general “rule” is that you should only lose 1-2 pounds per week.  So…we are talking about between 50-100 weeks (Between 1 and 2 YEARS) to lose that much weight.  (Mind you, we’re not even talking about KEEPING it off, which as we know is not likely, but simply LOSING that much).

So.  If you work REALLY hard.  For 1-2 years.  You could do it too!  You could lose 100!!! pounds.  And save 13 gallons of gas.  A year.  The title, by the way, of the article? “10 EASY ways to save over a grand on gas” (emphasis mine).  Now go back and read tip number 8 again.  Reflect on any diet you’ve ever dragged yourself through; just to lose a few pounds.  Multiply that by 100.  Is that REALLY an EASY thing to do?  Starve and destroy your body until 100 pounds “melt” off of you?!  Even the media will admit now that weight loss is “Hard” (and is willing to sell you any amount of pills and diet schemes to “make it easier”).  But still the idea persists that dropping weight is a simple matter of just not eating and exercising more.  And, for this author at least, is something that can be done at the drop of a hat as a way to save $100 on gas each year [although I am using the author's number here, has anyone else noted that 13 gallons of gas does NOT equal $100...unless gas were already at almost $8 a gallon.  Or wait, is the author assuming that we have to lose 200 pounds for that $100 dollar savings???] Yeah, WHOOOO a whole $1 (or 50 cents) for each pound you shed…now THERE’S incentive…why didn’t I think of that before…. 

Most frightening, I think, is how clearly this shows (especially by how blase the author is about such a large weight loss) how pervasive the idea that weight loss is EASY and YOU CAN DO IT TOO in our society…thus perpetrating yet again the myth that anyone who IS fat is to blame.  Because losing weight is so easy (to fail perhaps) that dropping 100 pounds to save 13 gallons of gas a year is easy beans…all us fatties must just be lazy and weak willed.  Yeah.  Right. If you accept that dogma so easily, I have a few papers to draw up and a bridge to sell you somewhere.

So everyone, do yourself a favor.  Save yourself from the 1-2years of agony.  LOVE your body the way it is.  If you’re really worried about saving $100 a year on gas?  Combine a few shopping trips throughout the year.  It just might save you that AMAZING 13 gallons in no time…and no pounds…flat.

*Edited simply to fix my own math error…1-2 lbs a week for 100 pounds would be 50-100 weeks; not 100-200.

One of the blogs which really got me to thinking about fat, body shape and healthy living irregardless of those first two; Shapely Prose; fairly recently had a post about new shirts available in their store of fat-positive clothing and knick-knacks.

In the comments thread for this post, folks were trying to offer up a slogan for a new shirt which would embody the spirit of HAES (Health At Every Size) and the idea of excersizing for fun and health, rather than to shed those extra pounds.  The line I came up with, “I exercize to Move It, not to Lose It” received a general applause.  The last few days, especially hearing the complaints of fellow co-workers who bemoan the need to run an extra mile or two to “work off” that piece of cake at lunch, I’ve been pondering this thought more and more.  You might say that the need to write about this is what spurred my launch of this blog!

What it comes down to is simply this: your body is NOT some sort of fat or calorie teleportation device; not an abacus of weight gain/loss directly correlated to movement.  Excercising until that elliptical machine shows “250 calories burned” does not somehow magically lift that 250 calorie slice of cake you ate and, for some reason, feel so damned guilty about, OUT of your body. Despite the pervasive “Common Knowledge” myth that 3,500 calories= 1 pound of weight, studies have shown the drastically increasing your activity, simply to lose weight, does not work (and may even have the reverse effect!).

So why are you exercising so hard, for so long, in a manner you HATE, in the vain attempt to somehow remove the guilt and the weight of having eaten something? Why not find an activity you LOVE to do and enjoy it for the simple pleasure it brings?  Rather than count the calories burned or the heart rate reached, take time to feel the joy in what you are doing and the healthier body it might help develop?

Love swimming?  Then feel the power of your muscles as you slice through the water across the pool.  Marvel at how your body, that body you dismiss and feel disgust over for its small imperfections so often, manages to move you so fluidly. Don’t count the laps to ascertain how many calories you “burned”.

Enjoy running?  Then feel the strength in your legs as you get up that next hill.  Feel the wonder of your body moving in a solid pace and feel your lungs enjoy each breath. Don’t track each mile as another 200 calories you are “allowed” to now consume.

Me?  I dance.  I swim.  I walk.  All because I LOVE to!  When I dance I amaze myself with the way my body can move; the way I can put in motion the feeling of a piece of music.  When I swim I close my eyes and feel the water lapping over my skin, glorying in the strength of my muscles moving me along.  And when I walk I look around and feel the ground beneath my feet and feel my lungs getting stronger.  I know that my next session on my trumpet will have even more power thanks to my stronger breathing.  Through it all, I just amaze at my wonderful body.  This amazing, fat, powerful body; which not only gets me through the mundania of the regular movements required of it, but also manages to astound me every day with the other wonderous motions it can make. Not in any of those thoughts is the count of how many calories I’ve burned away and how much potential weight loss that might translate into.

So my advice to you? Find an activity you LOVE.  I personally found that running an elliptical machine in the gym is not for me.  However, dancing and swimming?  Perfect!  So, find what you love and are able to do, to whatever level you are capable.  Then, do it.  Exercise for fun, for strength, for the more powerful lungs and a lower-stress mind that it may bring.  Don’t worry about reaching some weight goal or redeeming some snack by running another mile.  Stop when you are tired and ready to rest.  Your size does not matter (you CAN be fit and fat).  Your level of ability does not matter.  How you look while DOING it does not matter.  Be kind to your body and just move for the love of Moving It!  Not…for the love of Losing It.

I am an avid bellydancer.  I love to swim. I take long walks almost every day. I am in great shape.  I am also fat.  While the thought is daunting, I believe it is time I added my voice to the fat-o-sphere.  So here are my wiggly, jiggly, shapely thoughts on fat and life.

I will do my best to share my views on the works of science regarding fat-phobia in this crazy world as well as share my thoughts on more everyday topics related to being fat and how that intersects my own life.